Now that Jeff Bridges and Kiefer Sutherland have
scored recent successes for their respective principled, upright portrayals of
a dogged, veteran Texas lawman Marcus Hamilton in the film Hell or High Water and U.S. Cabinet member-turned-unlikely U.S.
President Tom Kirkman in the TV series Designated
Survivor, it’s fun to harken back to an occasion where they played
decidedly unsettling antagonists of a murkily creepy sort in the effective yet
undervalued horror thriller The Vanishing (1993), an American
remake by Dutch director George Sluizer of his acclaimed 1988 Spoorloos. Critical and audience
reaction to Sluizer’s revisiting of the material was tepid, yet those in search
of Halloween jitters might get a jolt or two out of the intriguing opportunities
it offered both Bridges and Sutherland to play off-kilter characters whose
intersection takes them out of each’s comfort zone. Bridges plays outwardly
mild-mannered, soft-spoken (if quizzically accented) chemistry teacher Barney
Cousins, a husband and father who carries out a sideline in plotting and
executing abductions. Sutherland plays Jeff Harriman, whose girlfriend Diane (a
pre-stardom Sandra Bullock) disappeared from a rest stop where the couple took
a break during a long vacation drive. Three years later, Diane’s vanishing has
left Jeff shattered and obsessed with finding out the truth of what happened
and whether Diane is still alive. It turns out that Barney, Diane’s kidnapper,
has been watching Jeff, and like a psychotic puppet-master, makes himself known
to the broken man with the twisted proposal that if the need to know Diane’s
fate is so overwhelming, the haunted Jeff should allow himself to undergo her
ordeal. Films about manipulative maniacs are not new; the electrical current
that buzzes through this particular iteration comes from watching Bridges and
Sutherland, normally – with a few exceptions – exemplars of flawed but
relatable everyday guys, revealing their amoral dark selves with nerve-wracking
conviction. Sluizer (who co-wrote Spoorloos
with source novelist Tim Krabbé) and American adaptor/screenwriter Todd
Graff (better known as an actor from The
Abyss and Strange Days) ratchet
up the suspense with chilling scenes that depict Barney’s detailed kidnapping
preparation rituals (seen in flashback and drolly narrated by the psychopath)
and Jeff’s frantic search efforts, whose fruitless results cause an inner void
that will not allow him to get on with life, despite the promise of a new,
healing relationship with a sympathetic waitress named Rita (Nancy Travis). Reviewers
who hailed the 1988 Dutch original and downgraded this 1993 revision point to
the redeployment of Rita, a character having lesser screen time in the first
film, and her part in the altered final sequence of this version as primary
reasons that lightning did not strike twice with this material. But this version
of The
Vanishing, enhanced by an insinuatingly spooky score by pantheon
composer Jerry Goldsmith (The Omen,
Alien, Coma, Poltergeist and many other bump-in-the-night favorites), nonetheless
delivers shivers galore, as well as bravura lead performances by Bridges and
Sutherland, on Twilight Time hi-def Blu-ray.